Hey, all. Capone in Chicago here. I've seen this film twice now, with two very excitable crowds (the first time was with star and Chicago native Jennifer Hudson in the audience with her family; the second time was at BNAT8), and there's no better way to experience this rousing, people-pleasing film adaptation of the Broadway hit that may or may not be a veiled telling of the Motown story (in general) and the rise of the Supremes and Diana Ross (in particular). And while the film covers a great deal of chronological and emotional distance in its slightly more than two-hour running time, writer-director Bill Condon (Kinsey, Gods and Monsters, and an Oscar win for writing Chicago) manages to locate the heart of each of his characters and make us root for everyone to come out in the end relatively happy and successful. Not everyone does.

Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to know who to focus your attention on. The temptation is to let your eyes drift toward the most beautiful or most famous actors in this impressive cast. Condon seems to be waging a one-man (well, two-man, including me) admiration society for Beyonce Knowles’ hourglass rear. Knowles plays Deena Jones, the Diana Ross-like character who is part of a struggling Detroit-based girl group circa the 1960s called the Dreamettes.

When they are spotted at an amateur contest by car salesman and aspiring record producer and label founder Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx), he gets them a gig singing backup for established artist James “Thunder” Early (a transcendent Eddie Murphy, doing the best work of his long and spotty career). Many people will try to convince you that Early is a James Brown stand-in, and they’d be wrong. As Dreamgirls clearly establishes later in the story, he is more like Marvin Gaye, with a little Otis Redding thrown in. Whoever he may or may not be, Murphy is astonishing as the married, womanizing song-and-dance man so desperate for a hit record, he allows his music style to be changed and compromised (but he gets the hits, along with a drug addiction).

Foxx’s character might be the least believable, but he plays the self-centered Taylor (based on Barry Gordy) with a smooth sophistication mixed with snake-like charm. He makes decision FOR his artists rather than WITH them. The first big move he makes with the Dreamettes is getting them out from behind Early, renaming them the Dreamgirls, and moving the established, slightly plump lead singer Effie (newcomer Jennifer Hudson, the Chicago native who was famously bumped off a recent season of “American Idol”) to the background and moving the more traditionally beautiful Deena into the lead singer role. Effie also gets edged out as Taylor’s love interest in the film, and her eventual dismissal from the group and Taylor’s life serves as the launch pad for the musical’s most famous number “And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going,” the live theatre’s most memorable temper tantrum/emotional meltdown ever set to music.

And how about that music? Dreamgirls never lets you relax, especially in its second half, which consists of one showstopper after another. Husdon actually gets two big tearjerker numbers, while Knowles gets a newly penned power ballad “Listen,” from the musical’s original songwriters, Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen. And while Murphy's vocal skills have thankfully improved from his "Party All the Time" days, what really struck me was his acting, which has never been better. There's a particular scene that actually haunts her. After Taylor rejects a solid new track from Early for being too much of a message record, he break out his drug kit. When those in the room plead with him not to shoot up, Murphy throws a look at them that could stop a bullet in flight for fear of pissing him off, and certainly made me forget to take a breath for an instant. I could say quite a lot about the path Murphy's career has taken since he left the safe and secure confines of "Saturday Night Live." Dreamgirls goes a long way to forgiving many of the choices he's made in the last 20-plus years.

One of the film’s nicest surprises is a sweet signing cameo by Loretta Devine, who played the third Dreamgirl, Lorrell (here played by Anika Noni Rose), in the original Broadway musical. Lorrell is the most overlooked of the three girls, but she’s also probably the most stable, despite being Jimmy’s full-time mistress.

Dreamgirls doesn’t feature traditional dance numbers like other recent filmed musical, but it does offers up some truly memorable tunes and lavish costuming. As the record label grows and Deena’s star get bigger and brighter, the parallels between this story and the Motown history become clearer. It’s fun to watch how Condon has fun with the Motown thing, sometimes presenting other artists from the labels, including a Temptations-like male group, and a group of young brothers wearing fringe, fronted by a high-pitched lead singer. When the curtain comes down and the lights go up, the only thing that truly matters is that Dreamgirls never forgets to be entertaining even at the expense of deeper character studies. Most of the people in the film are not richly drawn by any stretch. We learn just enough about them to keep us interested in what happens to them before the immensely strong songs kick in, and I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Sitting here right now, I can easily hum a half-dozen of the songs without struggling to remember them, and that has to count for something. See the film with as big and diverse an audience as you can; that way, the odds that people will actually clap after the songs is greater, and that’s a great feeling in a movie theatre. The film opens Christmas Day.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com